


In Spite of it All

by jawsandbones



Series: Ficlits [20]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Battle Couple, Blight Cure (Dragon Age), F/M, Post Dragon Age Inquisition, Search for the cure, The Blight (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 02:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18065219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jawsandbones/pseuds/jawsandbones
Summary: Together, Zevran and the Warden search for the Cure to the Blight.---They walk paths not walked in an age. Their footsteps remain in the mud, will linger for another age, for someone else to find. They have traveled far, expect to go farther. It has swallowed up her lungs, taken an eye. She breathes blight, thinks she might not breathe for much longer. He follows behind her, as he has always done. He protects her back, her now blinded left. It has come faster than they expected. Other Wardens had offered sympathies, suggestions, no solutions. They seek their own. They investigate every rumor, ever small whisper. She’s begun to think it hopeless, although she doesn’t say so.





	In Spite of it All

They walk paths not walked in an age. Their footsteps remain in the mud, will linger for another age, for someone else to find. They have traveled far, expect to go farther. It has swallowed up her lungs, taken an eye. She breathes blight, thinks she might not breathe for much longer. He follows behind her, as he has always done. He protects her back, her now blinded left. It has come faster than they expected. Other Wardens had offered sympathies, suggestions, no solutions. They seek their own. They investigate every rumor, ever small whisper. She’s begun to think it hopeless, although she doesn’t say so.

The doors are overgrown with vine and weed, rusted shut. It has stood through time and tear, and now, they break the seal. Shoulders against the door, the two of them pushing with all their might. Feet slipping in the mud, hands pressed against the moss. Barely, it opens. Leaves brush across stone, and they track footprints. She is focused on the throne. He drifts. The walls are lined with something malevolent, but he suspects it was not always so. The statues are filled with it as well, veins that now run red. His hand lingers near them, travels over the static of it. He knows better than to touch lyrium.

She climbs the steps, slowly, carefully. The spear in her hand, shield in the other. Mushrooms grow beside skeletons, flowers bloom in what was once a crown. Through the fallen ceiling, sunlight streams. Dust turns in the air, and the silence seems deafening. Zevran’s footsteps, behind her. Climbing the steps to stand beside her. There is something here they do not understand. He reaches out, and the crown crumbles to dust in his hand. They disturb a grave. They expect to wake a god. They conjure demons, instead.

Stepping back, and he’s pulling the daggers free. Deep gasps from the walls, from the moss beneath their feet. Creatures claw their way free, things made of twisting lyrium, bones of the long dead. The temple has been breached. They fulfill their oath to their god. They protect it, even now. They do not rest. Noya turns the spear in her hand, moves to meet them. Raising her shield, and she waits for the time to strike. He guards her back.

She fights the same way she always has. She never undervalues her target. Light steps, she practically dances forward. A leap, the thrust of her spear. It meets a poorly made hand, and the things they now face conjure weapons of their own. Not of this earth, made of light and magic. They glow briefly blue, until the red infects them too. Raising her shield, dashing away the strike, and she narrowly misses her own. Zevran turns the daggers in his hands and he breaks into a run, catches the sword that strikes for Noya’s left.

They carry no recognition of the state of them. Upon their skulls, the _vallaslin_ of who they once were. More spirit than earthly things, they rattle in their rancor, their half-life. They seem to ignore him, focus on her. She carries the same weight of death, the same blighted poison. They recognize the one very like them, but not of them. Mahariel. They surround her, seek to claim her. From behind the throne, one walks. In its hand, a bow. Drawing back the string, and the arrow simply is. Letting it go, and they both don’t see it.

A grunt, as it lands heavy in her shoulder. Whirling, and its drawing back the bow once again. Raising her shield, and she catches this one, as Zevran tears the other apart. It’s taking too long to fight them. The others are approaching. The doors behind the throne open. More of them, more bows in their hands. “Run,” she says. He doesn’t need to be told twice. Noya pushes him forward, raises her shield as she steps behind him. She catches arrows. Not all with her shield. 

Slipping through the entrance, back out into the mud of the bog. Through the only safe path, fleeing over the steps they had walked. She wheezes, rattles, blood in her mouth. Zevran slips an arm around her waist, pulls hers over his shoulder. The spear and shield both fall, useless weights. They hear shouting behind them, words they don’t understand, in a tongue that’s mostly forgotten. Desperately, he half carries her, half drags her. He ignores his own limp, arrow in his calf, his back peppered as much as hers. “Come, _amor_ , we have a ways to go yet,” he says. Their feet sink into the bog, slow them down.

As they gain distance from the temple, the arrows begin to fade. The magic so tied to the place, now seeking to return. All that is left in their place is blood, parts of it that seem so unlike her. So like a darkspawn, instead. “I should have just gone on my calling,” she says, her voice low and wheezing, “I would have had more time with them that way.” Her eyes close as he pulls her forward, the faces of her children flickering in her mind. “With you.” He holds her tighter.

“Do not say that. We will find the cure soon enough,” he says. She opens her eyes at that, struggles to look at him. He’s always looking forward, even here, even now. Such a change, they put in each other.

“Zevran, you have to put me down,” she says. With the arrows gone, she knows that the guardians cannot follow. He drags her to the tree line, and gently lowers her down with him. Taking her into his arms, cradling her tightly, her head resting against the crook of his neck.

“If we go back to the village, we can find a mage,” he says as he brushes hair away from her face. A stubborn piece by her temple, and he plucks it between his fingers, carefully tucks it behind her ear. Slowly caressing her face, a thumb brushing over her cheekbones. There’s blood in her hair, against her face. Eyes struggling to remain open, and her breathing is a low rattle.

“I’m sorry, _mi sol_ ,” she says.

“What for?” he asks softly.

“Dragging you here.” She fears she’s condemned him to die with her.

“I seem to remember it being my choice,” Zevran tells her. The slightest smile at that. He looks at the temple in the distance, the birds perched on its walls. The reflective water of the bog, the scattered trees and fallen bridges. The sun hangs low in the sky, and it’s not such a terrible place. Less so, with her. “You must stay awake. _Mi vida_. With me.”

“I’m here,” she mumbles, closes her eyes, “I’m here.” He holds her in a bruising grip. They’ve faced worse than this, haven’t they? A figure walks from the temple. They do not walk in the mud. Over the water, towards them, wearing a crown all their own. Zevran pulls the dagger from his belt, pulls Noya close. He will protect her until the end of him. As the figure draws closer, his grip on the dagger slowly loosens.

She crouches down before them, the staff in her hands. Her eyes seem different from what he remembers, seem to glow with an unnatural light. She tilts her head slightly, regards them sadly. “You both had to give much to save her before. A pact. Would you do it again?” she asks. Her breathing comes slower now, the spaces between her heartbeats growing. He puts the dagger down beside him, holds Noya gently. His hand at her face again, the gentlest touch.

“I would give everything to save her,” Zevran says.

“Good,” she says. “A war is coming. It will swallow up your children if you do not fight.” She reaches out, her hand over his. “And you _will_ fight.” Morrigan’s voice is steady, her gaze unflinching. This is the deal being struck. Her hand moves to Noya’s forehead. A glow, underneath it. Uncorrupted, unlike the temple. She pulls something from each of them. Muscle knits back together, flesh heals over. She pulls back her hand in a fist, and when Morrigan opens it again, in her palm sits some blackened thing. It could almost be mistaken for a rock.

Noya’s breathing evens. The blackened veins in her neck slowly recede, and the color returns to her cheeks. Opening her eyes, and they’re both bright and clear. Turning her head, looking at Morrigan. “What happened to you?” Zevran asks her. Morrigan doesn’t answer, simply grinds the rock to dust, and lets it fall, sink into grass and water.

“When I call, you will come,” she says. Noya reaches out, a hand wrapping around her wrist.

“Morrigan. Where have you been?” She doesn’t seem surprised to see her here. They woke a god, after all. Morrigan smiles, puts her hand over hers.

“Places you would not believe, my friend” she murmurs. She stands, shifting her staff from one hand to the other. She pulls a spear from nothingness, plants it into the ground beside them. A shield soon joins it. “Go home. Go back to your children. Guard them well, for when the veil falls, no one will be spared.” She turns, begins to walk back to the temple. The doors close behind her. Locked, untouched, and rusted over.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! You can always find me [@jawsandbones](http://jawsandbones.tumblr.com/post/146678434099)


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